


but some flare out with love

by Sour_Idealist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:18:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: A brief history of Lieutenant Hurley, Sloane the Raven, and the journey that ends in Goldcliff Square.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Someday, I will get into a fandom that is easy to explain.
> 
> In the meantime, here's this.

 

> _some things you do for money_  
>  _and some you do for fun_  
>  _but the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one_
> 
> \-- "Love Love Love," The Mountain Goats

**One.**

Private Hurley skitters into the rough-walled garage.  Clusters of people dot the soot-stained floor – elves, half-elves, humans, a gnome or two. Hurley can probably rule out the gnomes, unless the Raven is racing on stilts. Narrowing it down after that is… going to be a little harder.

“Hey! Hey, Curly!” Someone taps her shoulder, and Hurley whirls. A tall half-elf stands over her, wearing a leather jerkin with no shirt under it and some long, tight trousers. “Can you give me a hand with my wagon? I need more than two for this.”

The woman is smiling; she has grease and ash smudged across the arch of her nose, and one well-muscled, bare arm bears a half-finished tattoo: a sleeve of shining black feathers.

“Hey, don’t be scared,” the Raven says, smiling. “New here, right? Come on, I just need you to hold something in place, there’s nothing illegal about _that._ I can tell you about the ropes here while I do it.”

Hurley licks her lips. “Sounds good,” she says, and follows the Raven over to her shining, illegal wagon.

“I’m Sloane,” the Raven – Sloane – says over one shoulder. Her hair is one long, shining ponytail that falls to her hips. She must tie it under her mask when she races.

“I’m Hurley,” she says, and pushes her own hair behind her ears. “What do you need me to do?”

**Two.**

“That was _incredible,_ ” Hurley burbles, swinging Sloane around in a circle through the middle of the bar. “I mean, I know you didn’t win, but that was _beautiful,_ oh my God, when you dodged that javelin –”

“Yeah, too bad I couldn’t watch my other flank at the same time,” Sloane says, but she’s smiling. “Gods, it’s going to take forever to fix my wagon, I might miss the next race –”

“Oh, I’ll help!” Hurley says. “I’ll be down here every day I can, I can see if I can get us some tougher wood, my father runs a lumber yard – come on, let me buy you a drink, you deserve a drink!”

Sloane lets Hurley lead them to the bar, laughing. “Okay, okay,” she says. “Thanks. You know, some better wood might be good, what I had there was pretty soft because I could afford it.” The bartender already has their regular orders waiting, and she picks up hers. “Hey, Hurls. If you were gonna race with us, what do you think you’d want for a mask?”

“Sparrow,” the bartender suggests, and Sloane’s head snaps up. For a moment she is perfectly contemptuous and perfectly cold, and it would frighten Hurley if Sloane weren’t defending _her._

(Instead a curl of warmth makes itself known somewhere in the area of her stomach.)

“I think Hurley’s drink is on the house tonight,” Sloane says, and the bartender drinks away. “So. Come on, give me an animal.”

Yesterday at militia practice, one of the other recruits said Hurley was too small to be anything but a liability in a fight. Hurley put her head down, grinned like Sloane before the starting horn, and charged him into the opposite wall.

“The Ram,” she says. “I want to go right through anything that tries to stop me.”

“The Ram,” Sloane says, rolling it through her mouth like a sip of her wine. “The Raven and the Ram, the Ram and the Raven.”

“What do you mean?”

Sloane sets her fingers on the back of Hurley’s hand. “Want to watch my flanks out there?” she asks.

Hurley swallows. “Yeah, sure,” she means to say, and instead she blurts, “I’d love to.”

**Three.**

Hurley buries her smile in the bare skin of Sloane’s shoulder. Sloane’s sheets are rough and her blankets are warm and the whole bed smells like Sloane. Probably smells like Hurley now too, actually. If she keeps on smiling like this she’s going to burst. The city lights play over Sloane’s ceiling and illuminate a stuffed raven stitched together out of scraps of cloth dyed irregularly black. It’s tucked under the dresser, where Hurley probably wasn’t supposed to be able to see it, and it makes her hang on to Sloane even harder.

(Maybe she can get a fluffy little ram to give her for Candlenights.)

“Babe,” Sloane says, twining her fingers in Hurley’s hair. “So… one of the guys said he saw you heading into the militia building.”

“But I was down here with you all afternoon!” Hurley protests. She’s starting on a wagon of her own. The two of them can switch off between wagons, so they’ll never have to miss a race, and they can change strategies based on the competition.

“This was a few weeks back,” Sloane says softly, and Hurley goes stiff in her arms.

“Hey, hey,” Sloane says. “Look, we get a lot of new recruits who start as moles. No one can stay away from the track when they get a taste. Just… before we can keep doing this, I need to ask. What happens if your boss tells you to bring me in?”

Hurley takes a deep breath. She made a promise. But Sloane’s back is warm under hers, and no one has ever made her feel this good, and nothing she’s done with the militia has felt half as right as this. Or half as right as the sound of Sloane laughing while the wind whips every inch of exposed skin.

“Then I quit on the spot,” she says, “and we keep racing.”

**Four.**

“But Captain Bane,” Hurley says, “I _know_ – I mean, uh. In the course of my investigations of the Raven, I have… inferred a lot about her personality, and I don’t think she’s a thief on this scale. Not at all.”

“You said she and the Ram were one of the best arguments for the legalization of battlewagons, too,” Captain Bane says, and Hurley flinches, smelling road dust and burning skin. Even through the mask, she could tell Sloane wasn’t looking at her.

“I’m not meaning to say you’re a bad officer,” Captain Bane says, as Hurley locks her hands behind her back so she doesn’t wrap her arms around herself. “I’m not even saying I don’t, generally speaking, trust your judgement. But I _am_ saying that we’ve seen the Raven. There are eyewitness reports. Now, you’re the expert on the Raven – do you think, with the resources of our militia, you can track her down? Or do I need to hand this case over to someone else?”

Sloane didn’t say a word to Hurley after the race. She hasn’t said a word to Hurley since. And before that last race was the first time Hurley had ever seen her look scared.

“I can track her down,” Hurley promises. _I can save her._

**Five.**

“Oh, Hurls,” Sloane whispers, as the light wipes out the world and the skin of their intertwined fingers starts to roughen into bark. Hurley only knows it’s happening because it means she can feel the pain in her hands again. “Oh, love. I’m so, so sorry.”

“’s okay,” Hurley whispers as the bark creeps to her shoulders. “I forgive you.”

“I forgot,” Sloane says, her lips roughening. “It made me forget. I wanted to change racing with you. I wanted to grow you a garden.”

**(Six.)**

It’s a full moon night, and two girls are running hand in hand through the streets of Goldcliff, clutching hands and giggling. They dart from shadow to shadow like they think they’re being sneaky, and they’re covered in the ash and oil that you only get all over you if you’re building a battlewagon.

“We’re going to kick _ass_ ,” the smaller one, a gnome, promises. The other girl – a dwarf – laughs, pulling her towards the pool of water.

“Yeah, we are,” she says, “but not if your mama skins you alive for coming home like that. Come on, I’ve got cloths. Let’s clean you up.”

Carefully, she wets some rags in the pool and wipes off her companion’s face. The gnome girl laughs, tucking her thumbs into the dwarf’s belt. A gust of wind blows through the town, shaking loose a shower of cherry petals that settle in their hair.

“Kiss for luck?” the gnome girl laughs.

“We don’t need luck,” the dwarf says, smiling, “not as long as we’re racing together.” But she leans down anyway, and the two kiss in the shadow of the Lovers’ Tree.


End file.
